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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25623604">Air Needing Light</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FerusAurelius/pseuds/FerusAurelius'>FerusAurelius</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Action, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Reapers, Angst, Biotics (Mass Effect), Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Developing Friendships, First Contact War, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Military Science Fiction, Mission Fic, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Canon, Pre-Mass Effect 1, Relay 314 Incident, Saren-Centric, Turian Blackwatch, Turians</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:21:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,520</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25623604</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FerusAurelius/pseuds/FerusAurelius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Saren Arterius is the youngest and probably shortest recruit in the history of Blackwatch Team Ravus. </p><p>His first deployment as ground support on the colony of Shanxi is going well until the Systems Alliance 2nd Fleet crashes the turian occupation.</p><p>Even if Saren and his team survive—there's a non-zero chance that he'll be banished to the Cabals when this is all over.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Saren Arterius &amp; Blackwatch Team, Saren Arterius &amp; Original Turian Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Air Needing Light</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>*checks the date*</p><p>This is apparently the year I decide to rewrite Mass Effect canon out of a combination of frustration and spite. Thirteen years after the release of the first game. Because we were literally robbed at gunpoint and then run over by synthetic lovecraftian abominations in a world that would be just as interesting without them.</p><p>There's a tragic lack of backstory fic for younger!Saren out there, and I got to thinking about that codex entry in ME:3 where he's rumored to have been part of Blackwatch. So I decided to rewrite from the First Contact War as if that were true. And with the understanding that a world without Reapers would be very different.</p><p>While this work is solely concerned with Saren's experiences on Shanxi, there's a chance that it will be the first arc in a longer series.</p><p><b>Warnings:</b> I will try to be specific about anything that may be especially disturbing to readers, but this fic is written as military science fiction. The setting contains both genre-typical and canon-typical violence. Please exercise caution!</p><p>Chapter end notes will contain a quick reference to human and turian military terms.</p><p>The title is taken from A.S. Kline's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book I).</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Acknowledgements:</b> My wonderful sensitivity readers <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/drladybird/pseuds/drladybird">drladybird</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldiermom1973/pseuds/soldiermom1973">soldiermom1973</a> generously donated their time to calling me out when I got too ridiculous. Thanks are also due to my friend and beta, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/workaholic_praxian/pseuds/workaholic_praxian">workaholic_praxian</a>! Everyone mentioned much improved this chapter through their kind attention. Any remaining errors and/or exaggerations are wholly my fault.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The five of them were spread out in standard Blackwatch traveling pattern: a leader, two at the middle flanks, and two slightly behind in the sweep position. Their shadows bounced ahead of them over the ground, long and thin with this world’s sun glaring at their backs. </p><p>Nothing like a short hike for PT. </p><p>Never mind that their trail took them through an occupied alien colony population center, from LZ Echo to an interim contingency extraction point, because their Naval support shuttle had room for only half of Ravus Fireteam 3. </p><p><em>Optio</em> Ciprian hadn’t even been surprised. Just shared a look with <em>Curam</em> Minax, offered him the pick of their remaining supplies, and wished him safe travels while 3-1 and 3-2 arm wrestled to decide which half of the team would be stuck on-planet.</p><p>Saren suspected that Ranike had lost on purpose. The Marine detachment they were meeting was home to a few of his former squadmates from basic. Ever since the human surrender, the patrol flotilla’s discipline had begun to unravel in similar small but innocuous ways.</p><p>Saren forced his legs to continue supporting his weight as a shudder gripped him from belly to crest. Forced himself to keep pace with the taller brown-and-silver turian loping ahead of him.</p><p>The usual sore muscles and wrapped joints after a brutal sparring match were nothing compared to this. These traitorous—‘twinges’ was too mild a word—left his talons and jaw clenched, his blood thrumming behind his mandibles in a way that had nothing to do with broken thermal compensators. Even a full rotation of survival training was merely exhausting, but at least he could count on that to end!</p><p>Saren had first hoped the odd sensations would subside if he ignored them, reluctant as he was to admit they might be related to his first Blackwatch deployment. Some kind of common, atavistic reaction to impending combat that everyone experienced but no one talked about.</p><p>The cohort medics had cleared him before Fireteam 3’s drop, and he hadn’t wanted to bring it up then. According to mission protocol, he was also required to inform his team leader of any changes in his operational readiness. But if he could still function without their intervention, he had reasoned, then no one needed to know. </p><p><em>After the mission</em>, he’d promised himself.</p><p>Brief and knit close to the bone, the spasms only increased during the team’s rotation. They were now too consistent for him to maintain the pleasant, self-deluding fiction that they did not exist.</p><p>“Arterius, Vynos, spread out,” Minax’s gravel voice crackled over their comms in a familiar refrain. “This is Shanxi, not Armax. Go to a shooting gallery on your own time.”</p><p>Saren dropped back to better stagger his positioning with his flank partner, determined to stay focused on at least that much.</p><p>While CQC Specialist Trevia Vynos was similarly short in stature and this, in theory, made pacing easier, in practice they were both far more conscious of the taller soldiers gaining on them at the rear of the column. </p><p>You only got your spurs kicked a few times in basic before you adapted.</p><p>“Lenius, anything to report on Thracia detachment?” Minax asked, skirting the burnt shell of a human vehicle. The bombed out road they traveled was still just usable enough for a foot patrol, but no one would be moving supplies on it any time soon.</p><p>“Static, sir. Nulled comms since we left LZ Echo,” Ari answered. “I’m trying them every <em>quartent</em>.”</p><p>Their infiltrator, Ari Lenius, a tall turian with dull coloring that their instructors praised as natural camouflage, sounded more annoyed than concerned. Saren privately agreed with Blackwatch command’s assessment. Lenius’s gunmetal plates reflected very little light, which made her impossible to spot in any evasion exercises beneath forest canopy.</p><p>A few galactic hours in each planetary rotation were subject to partial systems blackouts. The flotilla brass operated as if the outages could be caused by anything from solar weather to sabotage. With the orbital and ground scenarios changing hour by hour, he couldn’t fault them. </p><p>The sooner Ravus broke atmo again and turned thrusters to Shanxi, the better.</p><p>Saren continued his visual sweeps of their left flank. The Marines holding this area operated out of a blockhouse that the team should be passing soon. While the humans had learned not to fire on turian patrols after they’d leveled a few city blocks in retaliation, death was the first fruit of carelessness.</p><p>He felt like prey, watched and vulnerable, when now was the time to embrace the calm of a true hunt. It should have been his reward after the grueling training, even more than the advancement to full <em>Allectus</em>. The youngest candidate ever selected by Ravus Fireteam 3, and he was still trembling like a fresh cadet.</p><p>It infuriated him.</p><p>“Pings to the rear, Minax. Strange engine signature. IFF is dark,” Ari’s voice broke over comms, now rapid and tense.</p><p>Saren didn’t have to be looking at her to know that her mandibles were pulled tight to her face with indecision.</p><p>Minax whirled as if he were ten years younger than his forty-five, his tac display lighting with enough indicators that the flashes were visible through his tinted visor. “Heavy guns! Drop!”</p><p>Saren boosted his barriers and sprinted toward the center point of the column, registering an ominous speck that moved fast and low against the backdrop of the planet’s setting sun. Seconds until it would be in firing range, if it wasn’t already. </p><p>Trevia was close to the center, but still standing.</p><p>
 <em>Too slow!</em>
</p><p>Saren yanked her down beside him until they were both marginally covered by a canted chunk of pavement. He braced just as the deployment whine of a heavy tech shield thrummed overhead. Less than a fragment of a second to hope that it would shatter before his bones did. </p><p>The holos of bodies subjected to strafing left nothing to the imagination.</p><p>Seven days of quiet and now a black mote, an enemy they couldn’t even see, was going to blow them to pieces.</p><p>Sizzling arc plasma slugs slammed into the defense matrix with a sound like a rockfall, a landslide, a mining blast. Fighter engines screamed, deafening him. The jetwash pressure rang in his cowl even through his hardsuit and then was gone.</p><p>He blinked away the grit, the ringing in his ears so loud he wouldn’t have even noticed if they’d been targeted with small arms fire.</p><p>Saren looked for the rest of his team through the dust cloud raised by the stuttering heavy plasma strikes. He lifted his visor and felt his mandibles snick against the edge of his makeshift cover.</p><p>A second blast had them flattening into the ground again.</p><p>“Carthaan,” Saren growled into the comm silence, an oily plume of smoke rising in the direction of their radix point. </p><p>A thermobaric device? Impossible to tell from this distance. Whatever noises the humans had made about surrender, they were here now in force. </p><p>“Arterius, green,” he rasped. Where was Minax? Could they even hear him?</p><p>Affirmatives followed from Trevia and Ranike.</p><p>“Minax is down.” Ari bowed over a shape half in and half out of the flickering barrier’s protection, barely visible in the orange half-light. “He pulled me to the shield when he should have dropped,” she bit out, hoarse. “Come on, Cirrus, please be breathing.”</p><p>He and Trevia started to go to them, Ranike as her wing partner still the closest, but visibly conflicted between moving to assist and unlocking his weapon.</p><p>“I have point,” Lucinis rumbled. He lowered his visor and started scanning.  “Arterius, Vynos, triage.”</p><p>“Minax is still with us,” Ari broke in. “Hit bad. I can see arc burns.”</p><p>His hands weren’t going to be steady enough for this. Not yet. Damned spasms.</p><p>Ranike Lucinis, their breacher and the tallest, bulkiest turian on Fireteam 3, had two years of Blackwatch experience. With Minax down, he also had command.</p><p>Saren knew procedure called for stabilizing the critically injured and moving out of the open. </p><p>Getting strafed a second time, even as an incidental target, would be the end of them. Ari carried their reserve barrier with her and Minax’s blackened medical kit, which left him and Trevia to move their unconscious team leader. </p><p>Saren unhooked a thin, rolled bundle from Ari’s pack. Useless, he’d thought. A groundsheet he’d last seen in basic training. He offered one end to Trevia, spread the rest far enough to hold one turian, and worked with her to drag Minax to the makeshift carrier. </p><p>Except for the familiar voices and signals, it was nothing like the drills.</p><p>“No pings, IFF still dark,” Ari reported. She’d fallen into the rear sweep position automatically.</p><p>“Doorway on your right, green,” Ranike called the all-clear. He stood at the entrance to the closest human structure with something resembling intact walls and a roof, his back to the outside, and his rifle’s light sweeping into the interior. “On your watch.”</p><p>“Watch on,” Trevia acknowledged, enough of an answer for them both.</p><p>Saren shared a look with her. He motioned toward the debris field with the hand that wasn’t gripping the tarp, identifying a rough heading. She nodded and held the other side more firmly. </p><p>“Moving,” he signaled. The toes of his boots pointed in their direction of travel, leaving his other hand free to reach for his sidearm.</p><p>They dragged Minax between them, crossing toward Ranike as quickly as they dared, their path dotted with still-smoking plasma scars.</p><p>Saren stumbled once, caught himself with a toe on the edge of a steeply sloped impact crater, and willed his boot to find purchase in the crumbling dirt.</p><p>There was no time to call for a stretcher, or to clean and dress the burns he could smell. With his visor retracted, he could even taste scorched ablative plating. It wasn’t quite strong enough to mask the underlying tang of blood.</p><p><em>Not yet, not yet</em>, he reminded himself. <em>Patience. Observe, orient, decide, act</em>. </p><p>He didn’t need his eyes to locate Ranike. High explosives were another distinctive scent to his genemod-enhanced sense of smell, even through the dust.</p><p>No alert to incoming fighters from Ari behind them. No warning signal from Ranike watching their approach from the doorway. They were in the open, but still clear. </p><p><em>Breathe, pull. Breathe, pull.</em> </p><p>He and Trevia kept up their ceaseless, intermittently halting struggle toward shelter. </p><p>Was that engine hum in the distance a drone squadron or another fighter? </p><p>Breathe and pull through another spasm.</p><p>One last heave over the threshold, together, and then he and Trevia cleared space for Ari. As reserve team medic, she was now Minax’s best hope for survival. </p><p>Trevia cracked a pair of chemlights, her striped green colony markings transforming her darker facial plates into an eerie, blue-lit mask.</p><p>Saren snagged the medkit and popped the case tabs, smelled antiseptic, and then skinned his gauntlets to field-sterilize his hands and talons with the mess. He slid the kit to Trevia, who swore and did the same. </p><p>Ari wasn’t far behind them and had moved quickly to Minax’s head to run diagnostics and vitals through her omni.</p><p>The battered medical case ended up back at Ari’s feet while Saren got his first real look at the wounds.</p><p>He hadn’t known plate could fracture like that. Blackened brown slivers -- it was worse knowing they had once been silver -- twisted into flesh where the ablative armor had been boiled away. The arc plasma had splashed below Minax’s shoulder and above the elbow. While both joints were still narrowly intact, he thought he glimpsed pale bone at the forearm.</p><p>“Emergency escharotomy,” he heard himself say, steady. “Right shoulder to right wrist.”</p><p>Ari made a sound of reluctant agreement. Field surgery in Shanxi’s levo-based environment might kill Cirrus anyway. But it was either take the risk or lose him to shock and compartment syndrome for certain. Even if he survived, Minax might never hold a weapon again.</p><p>“Trevia, take the scalpel,” Ari said, her mandibles flaring once, quick, and then held tight to her face. “You’re the steadiest with a knife. I’ll direct you.”</p><p>Saren held up a hand, ignoring his own still-obvious tremor. “Immunospray.” </p><p>He pulled the medkit back over and fumbled through a litter of fragments, heedless of the potential biohazard, impatient and working on touch in the dim light. He drew out a mercifully intact hypomodule that he offered to Ari. “Here.”</p><p>Its softly hissing activation sounded loud in the dark of the abandoned human building. </p><p>Large, vaguely rectangular shapes loomed just outside the reach of the chemlight. Hollow metal containers, according to his scanner. The place smelled of concrete, machine oil, and the cloying native dust.</p><p>A warehouse, maybe.</p><p>Saren leaned in to steady Minax’s arm while Trevia cut beneath the plasma burn, the pale sandy hide splitting and weeping blue in the scalpel’s wake.</p><p>It struck him that Cirrus’s markings were the color of his blood.</p><p>There was nothing for Saren to do but find their supplementary sedatives for Ari when she asked, seek out the equipment and dressings she needed, and try to anticipate her requests by running through burn mnemonics on the off chance that they’d forgotten something useful.</p><p>“Lucinis,” he asked, in part to distract himself from the inevitable and bloody conclusions of his ongoing medical assessment, “any response from Thracia or Carthaan?”</p><p>“Garbled,” Ranike grated, still standing guard at the door. Saren could see him only in profile, and only by turning his head away from Minax. A relief. He was tall and motionless as a sculpted Palaveni marble, his back braced against the wall to present a smaller target. </p><p>“The radix must’ve been hit after we were. Carthaan isn’t responding, but I’m still getting echoes on our frequencies, so they’re not done and dusted.”</p><p>Carthaan had access to a field autodoc. </p><p>If they could get Minax to the depot, he would have a chance. His undersuit thermal compensators had activated in tandem with his hardsuit seals to protect the rest of his body from further trauma, but with the multiple breaches they had maybe an hour until the emergency medical systems burned themselves out. </p><p>At least, they had an hour if Minax wasn’t already dead from an internal hemorrhage they were totally unequipped to treat.</p><p>Saren looked to Ranike. </p><p>The older turian considered him. “Suggestions, Arterius?” </p><p>Saren felt like he’d passed some kind of test. Ari had just finished bandaging Minax’s wounds as well as their field kit allowed, and was now running a confirmatory medscan with her omni. </p><p>“We’ve done all we can here, sir,” Saren answered. “We need a route to the strong side of the radix, and there’s an autodoc waiting if we can get to it. Maybe a perch for Ari.”</p><p>“Leaving myself on point, Lenius as sweep, and you and Vynos on transport,” he said, approving. Lucinis looked to the rest of the team. “Questions?”</p><p>There were none. </p><p>Ravus Fireteam 3, designated Epyrus while on Shanxi, knew their duties without his speaking, and they knew that Minax’s survival depended on this understanding. </p><p>“Visors and scramblers,” Lucinis ordered. “Make it quiet.”</p><p>Ranike took the lead from the door, his visor still down and tracking for hostile movement forward of their position. His time in Blackwatch had smoothed his weapons-free stride into an easy lope Saren could only envy.</p><p>Just behind Ranike, Saren supported their leader’s burned side, carefully positioning the injured limb between the ridge of his cowl and the back of his neck. Minax’s head knocked against Saren’s armored shoulder, his silver mandibles a mottled gray where they lay in shadow, loose with unconsciousness. </p><p>It was the best they could do for elevation under the circumstances, but it settled most of Cirrus’s not inconsiderable weight on Trevia. </p><p>She bore it well, her breathing steady and pace smooth while Ranike and Ari directed their movements in a terse call and response over their secured short-range comms. Front scout and rear sweep covering the vulnerable trio between them.</p><p>The turian they carried was too large in the keel and shoulders to allow them to complete a full visual scan, so he and Trevia split the field with their team leader’s body as the axis. </p><p>She growled when Saren jostled her in his hurry to reach the next position. He rumbled back a mocking echo of her warning, as he had done right before their last no-holds sparring match turned bloody. She’d cracked one of his spurs in retaliation then, a stern attempt to put him in his place, but the pain had been worth it for the look on her face when he forced her to tap out.</p><p>“Fuck you, Arterius,” Trevia hissed. “Be glad I have my hands full.”</p><p>Saren flinched. Now hadn’t been the time to bring that up. </p><p>“Compare crests back on the Steadfast, nestlings,” Ari drawled. “But do stay on that heading. E-2, you’re clear to advance.”</p><p>“Confirmed, E-5,” Ranike added blandly. “Let it be noted that E-4 is welcome to put her hands on me any time.”</p><p>Saren expected Trevia to go after their breacher next, but she let it pass. She inhaled deeply and then shifted beside him. The outburst he’d started fractured into a tense silence, thankfully relieved only by the standard signals. </p><p>They passed Thracia’s deserted blockhouse without being hailed and continued moving in silence until the radix’s reinforced sentry tower loomed ahead, still visible above an ominous fog of white and gray tactical smoke. </p><p>Saren’s visor adjusted automatically to filter the blocking frequencies preferred by the Hierarchy, transforming the gloom into a faint halo at the edge of his sensors. Still no alert from Ari’s networked rear scanning, though Ranike’s forward thermals bloomed with unfamiliar signatures past the radix walls.</p><p>The door Ari had chosen as their entry point was twisted into slag beneath the powdery edges of a slab of instacrete. Even if they got inside, there were armed humans waiting. Thracia’s Marines had likely mobilized to reinforce Carthaan after the first strike.</p><p>“E-2, ingress is blocked. If we—”</p><p>“Nulled, E-5. I can get us in,” Ranike interrupted. “E-3, E-4, slide up to the wall over here.” He tossed one of his smoke grenades into an impact crater where the pall was growing thin, then turned back to whatever anomaly he’d seen.</p><p>“E-2, that’s too close for a breaching charge,” Ari grated.</p><p>“No charges involved,” Ranike said quietly. Not that the volume mattered with the scramblers. While they would still be partially visible on thermal scans, their communications would register as random, directionless bursts of static.</p><p>Saren let himself sag against the wall, Minax’s weight still slung between him and Trevia but now partially supported by the structure. </p><p>The spasms had returned with a vengeance. </p><p>Ari joined them beneath the sightline of Ranike’s drawn weapon. There was no real physical cover to be found beside the radix wall, but the billowing mixture of smoke overhead was better than nothing.</p><p>Ranike lit his omni-blade and angled it into the bare instacrete with an air of concentration, the red of his markings tinged with orange behind his visor. The powder-fine dust and incredible high-pitched whine which accompanied this inexplicable operation were loud even against the backdrop of muffled detonations and the rattling <em>whump-whump-whump</em> of automatic weapons within.</p><p>Saren stared.</p><p>“Fast-fab structures are interesting,” Ranike began, his deep voice distinguishable over the din only by virtue of their comms amplification. “They sacrifice redundancy for speed in construction. A lot of Seps like to take them over. Standard floor plans and known entrances and exits.”</p><p>He withdrew the blade from the blackened pit he’d scored into the instacrete, and then knelt to repeat the operation at a point roughly half his height below the first.</p><p>“If you cut the flexsteel skeleton in just the right way…” He trailed off.</p><p>Cracks ribboned through the wall with a sound like a body dropping.</p><p>Ranike stood and shouldered his way into the suddenly yielding material, clearing a gap barely large enough for them to scramble inside. It would take stepping over the ledge of instacrete that still framed the ersatz doorway and tucking their heads, but it would work.</p><p>Saren helped Trevia wrestle Minax through first, Ranike aiding them from the other side.</p><p>They took turns after that, one soldier struggling to wedge their keel through the gap while the others pushed or pulled more or less helpfully.</p><p>“Never listening to you again, Lucinis,” Ari breathed, panting but successfully inside the base of the ruined sentry tower. “What the fuck?”</p><p>“Don’t inhale the dust if you can help it,” Ranike answered seriously. “A lot of the older Hastatim vets I served with had lung damage. They called it colony cough. On account of it being ‘too wasteful’ to use breaching charges for every fast-fab wall.”</p><p>Ari started to reply, but fell silent. Saren thought he heard the air defense guns in the distance.</p><p>“Lenius?” Saren prompted.</p><p>“The IFF systems are back online,” she said, her voice strangely flat. “But unless the humans have learned to fly Hierarchy patterns, I think they’ve got the Jiris autocannons shooting down our drones.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I've chosen to use human military terms and slang along with other words more specific to my interpretation of the turian Hierarchy. My notes follow. Enjoy!</p><h6>Definitions</h6><p><b>PT</b> - Physical training; a regular part of basic military training.<br/><b>LZ </b> - Landing zone; accessible to shuttles, troop transports, and other vehicles.<br/><b>Optio</b> [turian] - A noncommissioned officer in charge of a team. Reports to a <i>Curam</i>.<br/><b>Curam</b> [turian] - A noncommissioned officer with specialties in training and leadership. Above an <i>Optio</i> in the chain of command.<br/><b>Cohort</b> [turian] - 1000+ soldiers. The 85th Atrax Legion is divided into six cohorts. Cohort leaders are commissioned officers. Cabals fall under the 1st Cohort, Blackwatch the 5th Cohort.<br/><b>CQC</b> - Close-quarters combat; a tactical concept usually focused on infantry with light arms in confined spaces.<br/><b>Null(ed)</b> [turian] -  <b>No factor</b> [human] - A non-issue; Ex: “Blocked doorway? Null(ed). There’s a cleared path around back.”<br/><b>Quartent</b> [turian] - One quarter of a galactic standard hour.<br/><b>Flotilla</b> [turian] - Contrary to the popular <i>Fleet and Flotilla</i>, which uses these terms as analogues for turian Hierarchy craft and quarian liveships, most police actions are carried out by smaller, faster, and more lightly-armed patrol flotillas. Turian flotillas are lead by cruisers, supported by roving "wolfpacks" of frigates, and are absent the full might (and implicit threat) of Hierarchy dreadnoughts.<br/><b>Blockhouse</b> - In military science, a small fortification. On Shanxi, outposts in occupied human territory held by turian Marines.<br/><b>Allectus</b> [turian] - A turian designation roughly equivalent to humanity's N-7 training program. Elite Hierarchy soldiers. Only those 'elected' to a special forces team carry the designation. It is possible to complete the training and fail the selection.<br/><b>IFF</b> - Identification friend or foe; a system within the broader military action of Combat Identification (CID).<br/><b>Radix</b> [turian] - A rendezvous point, usually some kind of fortified structure; also the author making a nerdy pun because in mathematics a 'radix' is literally the 'base' in a system of numeration. I couldn't resist.<br/><b>Observe-Orient-Decide-Act</b> - A callout to the 'OODA loop' developed by USAF Col. John Boyd.<br/><b>Escharotomy</b> - A procedure to alleviate swelling and inflammation which may threaten circulation of blood in severely burned tissue (it's more complicated than this, but that's the gist); a real thing. Don't google it if you're squeamish.<br/><b>Compartment syndrome</b> - A condition where pressure builds up in one of the body's compartments and impairs blood circulation; in my head turians are more vulnerable to severe forms of this complication because of their anatomy.<br/><b>Epyrus, Thracia, Carthaan</b> [turian] - Turian colonies used as operational designations for ground forces.<br/><b>Steadfast</b> - A turian cruiser and Ravus Fireteam 3's orbital base of operations, along with their support staff from the 5th Cohort.</p><h6>World Notes</h6><p><b>Blackwatch Team Ravus:</b> Gray team. There are six blackwatch “teams” (centuries) consisting of five operational units in each. Gray team's most notable specialties are unconventional warfare, in extremis hostage rescue, and reconnaissance allowing deployment of other elite Legions (like Armiger). They are considered the elite of the elite. Gray team has five operational units including a command team (with medical), a dedicated intelligence team, a field team (of five operational fireteams of 8-10 soldiers each, which can be split into two smaller groups of 4-5), a supply and logistics team, and a vehicle team. Gray team has first pick of Blackwatch hopefuls and selection is by nomination from current officers and command team leaders. If you aren’t picked by a pair of team leaders, you aren’t selected, period. Ravus Fireteam 3 is led by Curam Cirrus Minax and Optio Electa Ciprian. Saren Arterius is the youngest turian ever selected for Fireteam 3. Electa is a former Fireteam 3 Allectus, promoted to Optio to lead alongside Cirrus and to train as his likely replacement when he retires. They’re good friends. Her nickname is “Aeda,” a garbled combination of her actual name and the turian word for ‘elite.’ She loves it.</p><p>While I don't normally write military science fiction (and this is my first work ever in the genre), I have referenced and continue to read a lot of fiction written by veterans. Saren's musing about taller soldiers treading on him is based on a bootcamp experience described in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Yumi">Marine Corps Yumi</a>, a wonderful slice-of-life manga that I highly recommend checking out!</p>
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